Fiege Films

This American Life (a.k.a. “my favorite show on the radio”) just had their annual poultry show last weekend–Poultry Slam 2008–and “Act Three: A Pastor and his Flock” continues the Mississippi Chicken story. After watching Mississippi Chicken, producer Sarah Koenig contacted me about their upcoming show on the theme of God and chickens. Anita and I then referred her to the Western North Carolina Workers’ Center, where Anita has been working very closely with the folks there over the past year and half on their organizing campaigns. Set within the workers’ ongoing struggle to unionize and the poultry company’s rabid anti-union campaign, Sarah Koenig tells a fascinating story involving an organizer, a poultry plant manager and his priest. If you didn’t hear it this past weekend, check it out here.

PBS just posted a clip from Mississippi Chicken on their website as a supplement to the Exposé story, “20,000 Cuts a Day,” featured on Bill Moyers Journal:

“20,000 Cuts a Day” tells the story of the reporters behind “The Cruelest Cuts,” the investigative series about the poultry industry, published in The Charlotte Observer last February. The Observer series is a stunning work of investigative journalism that reveals the corruption of both the poultry plants and the Bush Administration that is behind the egregious health and safety violations in the Carolina poultry plants–similar to those that occurred in Mississippi Chicken.

You can watch the entire “20,000 Cuts a Day” here; you can read the original special report from The Charlotte Observer here; and you can watch the Mississippi Chicken clip featured on the PBS website here, where you can also leave a comment about the clip.